First of all, the codes:

Arrogance or Pride

Selfish or Inconsiderate behavior

Tyranny / Abuse of power

Out of Touch mentality

Judgmental Attitude

Lust for Status / Envy

Lust for Power

Sycophantic behavior or cowardice. This applies to her acceptance of or requiring such behavior, as well as acting that way herself.

Betrayal of a personal nature

Dishonesty

Protagonist Syndrome {behavior that is absolutely contraindicated unless the character knows she is a main character in a fantasy novel and thus critical to the resolution of the crisis, or bound for greatness against all in-story expectations}

Hypocrisy

Foolhardiness / Reckless endangerment of herself or others

And some that are venial level sins, or not explicitly bad or evil:

Flat out incompetence or incorrect conclusions or assessments

Stupid or Clueless behavior

Sociopathic mentality or desire toward violence or to victimize others (as opposed to actual action)

Petty, nasty or spiteful words and attitude / General rudeness

Uncooperative, resisting doing her part.

The Pattern at work, sometimes against Egwene, sometimes her going against it

Not a fault per se, but a noteworthy point of interest or milestone

Taking the side of the White Tower, or a position of inherent Aes Sedai supremacy

Part 11Knife of Dreams
1: One of Egwene’s first observations upon waking in captivity is the condition of Tar Valon with the garbage in the streets. Claiming that the Amyrlin Seat is personally responsible for Tar Valon, she asserts that the garbage situation alone is sufficient to remove Elaida. If a negative impact on the condition of the city is a crime for which the Amyrlin Seat deserves removal (considering that all three prior Amyrlin deposals were for interferences with leading figures in the real world and undermining heroes in the fight against the Shadow, that claim alone is fairly suspect, given the relative scale of neglecting trash pickup during a civil war on the eve of the apocalypse to betraying Manetheren, Artur Hawkwing or the Dragon Reborn), Egwene IS the person thoroughly responsible, by planning, commanding, and executing the sabotage of the harbor chain, for cutting Tar Valon off from supplies.

2: Egwene is also infuriated to discover that her Great Serpent ring is missing, claiming that they will not deny that she was Aes Sedai. Except she is only Aes Sedai by a technicality, dependent entirely on the legitimacy of her claim to the Amyrlin Seat. The very presence of her captors in Tar Valon indicates their personal rejection of that claim, which is every bit as legitimate an opinion as those who reject Elaida. The difference being, the Tower loyalists have the law on their side, as even Salidar leaders have stipulated. All Egwene has on hers is wishful thinking and brute force. Regardless of the outcome, there is absolutely reason for any sister not of the rebel cause to accept Egwene’s Aes Sedai status.

It’s one thing to perpetuate an idea to garner support for your cause, but it is another thing entirely to believe your own propaganda. And that’s apparently Egwene’s thing.

3: Egwene is also, as is usually her custom when she can’t give orders, fully of catty observations regarding the women she encounters. Egwene contrasts Berisha’s reputation for strict adherence to the letter of the law with her assertion that novices need to be “guided not bludgeoned,” calling it “a far cry from her views on law,” as if the one has anything to do with the other. How does believing a law means what it says even remotely applicable to a philosophy on teaching or guiding? Because Egwene doesn't see law as anything other than a convenience to be ignored if no one holds you to it, she associates those who hold different views as unduly harsh and as enemies. The idea of seeing an enemy with good qualities is even further beyond her frame of reference than respecting the law as a principle.

She also makes some derisive comments about Nicola’s habit of lying and the probable ramifications of her true age being discovered. It has been well-established in prior books that the Tower would do exactly nothing, as they have made a practice of retaining women who lie about their age, especially ones who show as much potential as Nicola, sometimes even inducing girls who are too old to lie so they can be admitted.

She also comments on the emptiness of the Tower, and her companions’ taking it as a matter of course. Almost as if Egwene’s actions over the last few months had not been focused entirely on prolonging & exacerbating a situation in which two thirds of the sisters are absent from the Tower!

4: The full scope of Egwene’s idiocy and incompetence in taking over the harbor operation is revealed when Melare describes Leane’s tactics, of shielding herself against detection and inverting her weaves. Having briefed Bode to carry out the operation as planned, it is almost certain that Bode would have done the same thing, and not even been caught. Of course, even if she had been captured by the waiting sisters, the ramifications would not have remotely been the same.

During her more self-pitying moments, Egwene mentally postures with her concern for the cause, which is really just self-glorification with all her assumptions that she is the indispensable figure in the all-important cause of pulling down Elaida, that in her absence, Romanda & Lelaine will not be able to handle leadership of the rebels. If this is honesty what she believes about the situation, why is she risking the entire cause on a tactical operation when there are more expendable people, who would themselves be at less risk, who could do the job better than she in some ways?

5: Upon being given over to the Mistress of Novices, Egwene feels for the first time, the unmitigated, too-harsh, unreasonable hand of Elaida, whose willful prejudices and lust for power and glory will not allow her to be at all reasonable or a judicious leader, and who will certainly alienate the Dragon Reborn, left to her own devices.

This monster’s vicious & self-gratifying judgment on Egwene is that she was a dupe and misled, and will get a second chance. While most people focus on the tactical blunder of Elaida doing so, it is also the most eminently reasonable & merciful position. Combined with her repeated offers of forgiveness and mercy to outright traitors in the name of Tower unity, where does the picture come from, of Elaida’s horrible personal qualities that necessitate her removal? Isn’t there just the slightest possibility she might have been no worse than any other Amyrlin, had she been given half a chance?

Much of what Silviana says is also a judgment on the irregularity of how Egwene’s training was run under Siuan and Sheriam…but what character has offered either woman a fraction of the praise Egwene has? Who defended Sheriam from Nynaeve’s suspicions as far back as tDR? Maybe Silviana’s an idiot, in which case, surely only a bigger idiot would make her Keeper of the Chronicles.

6: According to Siuan, who shares the opinion about Egwene’s indispensability, claiming that all their hopes rest on her shoulders, Egwene has specifically ordered her and by extension, the rest of the rebels, not to attempt to rescue her. She also told Siuan that she would not be tried, stilled or executed or even punished, all to support her case by removing the urgency from her situation. That’s a lot of information…and yet, Siuan has no idea what her real circumstances are. For no discernable reason other than the maintenance of her ego, Egwene took some pains to avoid letting Siuan know that she is being treated as a novice. Again, she is, by her and their estimations, the indispensable figure in this conflict. She claims a position of leadership & responsibility, they might urgently need her at any time for any reason, and she’s concealing key details of her situation out of pride.

7: Egwene’s commands against rescue, aside from preserving her from the embarrassment of being hauled out in a novice’s dress, are to prevent any conflict between her rescuers and her guards, because of previously mentioned attitudes that would prevent Aes Sedai from cooperating with one another once one side or the other was defeated. Egwene wants ALL the power, over EVERY sister, so this outcome is plainly something that must be avoided at all costs, no matter how much false hope it gives Elaida, or undermines the morale of her side, and no matter how long it drags out the struggle, even to the very eve of Tarmon Gaidon. Because everyone must bow to Egwene. The notion of Tarmon Gaidon scaring the dissidents back into the fold would obviously be no more acceptable to Egwene than having Siuan obey because of her debt to Nynaeve. So Egwene has to make everyone acknowledge her personally, and until she gets what she wants, the rest of the world can go hang for channeling help.

Subsequent to Siuan’s briefing of Egwene’s slaves, she is accosted by Lelaine for a private conversation. As Siuan mentally places herself in a servile position relative to Lelaine as if the latter was some sort of exalted higher being, merely because she can channel more of the Power than Siuan, Lelaine scandalizes her by commenting on the oddity of her retaining her friendship with Sheriam, and explaining that the differences in strength between Siuan and her former friends would seem to preclude such friendships, explaining why she herself has not behaved as such since Siuan’s Healing. Siuan is shocked at this statement, not because Lelaine is putting absurd customs and petty status games ahead of two decades of friendship, but because she is violating custom enough to speak of these differences, which Siuan treats as real.

These absurdities are encouraged by the Tower, because they force people to put Tower practices ahead of emotions, human connections and personal loyalties. If you have to check the Tower’s rules of strength interactions, and then the rules of the Ajahs regarding relationships with other sisters, every time you form a personal connection…well, it’s going to be easier to just make friends with people at approximately your own strength, and of your Ajah. Which means you are accepting two artificial categories of Aes Sedai invention as preconditions for friends. It explains why throughout the series, we never see inter-Ajah friendships or partnerships, aside from those assigned by the Tower (various embassies and missions), imposed by isolation (Teslyn, Joline & Edesina) or in rare cases of congruent interest, and those only between women of near-identical strength (Verin & Alanna, both of whom are unorthodox anyway) or whose circumstances get around the strength issue (Seaine & her fellow Sitters). Even Seaine & Pevara only reconnect when driven by extreme circumstances, and their own relationship is so aberrant that it draws high level attention, from other sitters and even the Black Ajah.

All of this, of course, is part of the Tower’s general policy of quelling any sort of relationship or loyalty that might subvert a sister away from unquestioning fidelity to the White Tower. Friendships between sisters are muted and stifled by Tower regulations and customs, sisters who might act on a moral impulse instead of a pointless Tower directive are murdered if they display that inclination when presented with such a scenario. Faile speaks about the unnatural familial behavior displayed by historical Aes Sedai, and we will further see in this book, examples of other practices that whatever explanation is offered, only make sense in the context of this institutional jealousy of all other ties and loyalties on the part of the sisters.

8: When we get Elaida’s PoV the day after Egwene’s capture, we see she has a similar attitude towards the administration of the Tower, towards avoiding fighting in the name of maintaining the Tower’s power and prestige afterwards (with apparently no reciprocation of Gareth Bryne’s petty grudge from their time advising Morgase), and towards the importance of governing the city. We further see that she has not been neglecting the sanitation conditions, her repeated orders are being ignored.

The apparently universal resistance of the Tar Valon residents to cleaning up their own filth has no mundane explanation, until one recalls the state of Forsaken-ruled cities in tDR. Under Sammael, the Illianers had become violent and belligerent, under Bel’al, the Tairens were prone to malaise and despair, and under Rahvin, the people of Caemlyn had become furtive and scheming. While Mesaana does not rule openly, neither had Rahvin at that point. But with a Forsaken influencing the governing apparatus, their effect comes into play. Egwene has been blaming Elaida for phenomena that is not her fault.

As mentioned above, the villainess who must be defeated at all costs, is shown to be remarkably like Egwene in her priorities, perspective and loyalties. Proving, of course, that Egwene’s rebellion is not about a necessary action, but pure self-aggrandizement.

9: Beonin’s arrival further compounds Egwene’s idiocy and ineptitude in taking over the chain operation. Because Egwene was captured, Beonin assumes the rebellion is ended, and returns to the White Tower to demonstrate for Elaida the means to Travel. By substituting herself for Bode, Egwene singlehandedly defeated the whole point of the gambit, but also managed to do so in the way that most hurt her so-precious city. Now there is no chance of the White Tower being starved out or cut off from anything Elaida wants, but the regular people, the massive portion of an island city that lives by maritime commerce, their lives are a disaster. Every stevedore and customs clerk, every shop and inn that counts on dock and ship workers for their commerce, are now facing ruin, so that Egwene al’Vere could achieve ultimate power, but lacked the self-control to let the designated people do their jobs. And by allowing Beonin to return to the Tower with Traveling, she also reduces the incentive for the Aes Sedai to get off their asses and fix the chain, since the Tower and the sisters are no longer impeded by it in the least.

10: In the Forsaken Garden Party, we receive confirmation of what should have been obvious to this point – the rebellion has been supported and encouraged by the highest levels of the Shadow all along. Once Siuan gave them a strategy for more than a demonstration, Aran’gar was sent to infiltrate Salidar. With her absolute control over Delana, we saw long before this how she supported Egwene’s ascent to power and exacerbation of the state of war, with Delana plainly taking her cue to vote on the declaration of war from Aran’gar, even over her own preferences. And now Aran’gar is outright stating that Egwene is her best tool in her agenda to turn the Aes Sedai against each other have them “hating each another in their blood”. Both Mesaana in the Tower, and Aran’gar in the rebel camp are in favor of continuing the fight, and both approve of Egwene’s course of action!

This is the good end Egwene has devoted all her character arc to? No one else among the main characters has an agenda that serves the Shadow’s design to this degree.

11: When Romanda starts going on about Egwene’s qualities that inspire her grudging respect, and Nisao ads her own opinions, it is important to remember two things. First, Romanda’s assessment is grounded in her assumption that Egwene has no access to coaching, that Siuan cannot possibly be advising her, due to controls on the dream ter’angreal, when we know that to be false. Second, both Romand and Nisao are in the same position as Siuan was a few books back. They can either admit to themselves they were trapped or outmaneuvered by a neophyte, or they can mentally recast the woman who has obtained the upper hand over them as a skilled leader or brilliant politician. The more they inflate the stature of the woman who appears superior to them, the more room there is for their own self-images to expand. The two women from an Ajah infamous for its arrogance can either admit they got outclassed by a snot-nosed punk, or else pretend they are having some difficulty with a political genius; admit she has been blackmailed by a twit and trapped by her own lack of nerve, or pretend she is willingly serving a worthy leader. Nisao even goes so far as to toss out the trivia issue of Egwene’s longest-ever reign (ooops), as another bit of fluff to expand that reputation.

12: Egwene’s captivity in the Tower begins with a regaling of her “punishment”: she is struck on her bottom with a slipper. Not a hard object, not a leather strap. A slipper! Hard-soled, to be sure, but a distinction is made frequently in the books between actual shoes and slippers, the latter being cited as more lightweight and delicate. This is a punishment that is used in homoerotic pranks and initiation rituals. And a grown woman “made no effort to stifle her sobs when she came, or later her wordless howls.” Silviana has to pin down her legs to stop her from thrashing around! My parents stopped using this kind of punishment, albeit with wood or leather implements, well before I reached puberty, because it stops being effective on people half Egwene’s age. There are drinking games in the real world with more onerous penalties. And Egwene is proud of herself for finding a way to endure all this.

Bear in mind, this is a series where main characters are explicitly tortured. People of the same organization, with the same scale of pain and punishment as are spanking Egwene, while specifically refraining from breaking her, beat Rand with the Power, with the explicit intention of breaking him, of making him suffer for revenge. And he took it all with no more expression other than to smile at his tormentor. Egwene’s chief tormentor later decides she needs Healing! And meanwhile, Egwene has the advantage of pain management techniques, which no one bothered to teach Rand, despite his having an Aiel tutor, whose side Egwene took, every time she got mad at him for no reason.

Much is made of how she suffers for her cause, but this is a pretty absurdly expansive definition of suffering, and considering she is holding out in the hopes of obtaining absolute authority over one of the most influential and powerful organizations in the world, her sufferings are a small price to pay. Egwene herself scoffs in reflexive reaction to her promised punishment, before mentally reconfiguring her experience into an epic martyrdom.

13: And the actions Egwene takes to establish her superiority? Showing off unnecessarily to embarrass the Accepted who are just trying to do their jobs, while she sneers that they shouldn’t ask her to do things she can’t do herself. She phrases her visit to her sole supporter, as “not neglect(ing) Leane” like she’s doing her a favor. In fact, as always, Leane is more effective in their propaganda campaign, and Egwene has to fight jealousy. And, Miss Tower Law is everything, who depends on Tower Law for all her authority, since its technicalities are the sole reason she has any power or status, casually violates it for her own advantage to reveal both the secret records and their contents, to impress sisters.

Much of Egwene’s sojourn in the Tower only serves to highlight their inadequacies. They have no procedures or program, just randomly sending her to lessons on the off-chance she’ll decide to accept her status. There is no consistency to her training or discipline, allowing Egwene to treat each encounter as a separate incident. Were they serious or remotely competent, they’d have done something like Bethamin recommends to break Teslyn, or similar in spirit to how Cadsuane will later break Semirhage. Instead, some of her lessons end up serving as respites from punishments, and encouragement because an Aes Sedai preoccupied with more important concerns makes a slip of the tongue, or lets her get away with stuff.

The problem is that they chose to treat her like a novice, which invites the Aes Sedai to fall into the trap of measuring her by novice standards. Egwene has had access to information that no novice does, and yet, is woefully deficient in her actual body of knowledge. But because she is in a novice dress, and because Aes Sedai, as mentioned before, lock into categories based on strength and status, her advanced knowledge comes out as far more impressive, while her ignorance and shortcomings are ignored because no one else of her purported status would have done better.

What is more, novices have nothing to hope for beyond the Aes Sedai deciding arbitrarily to promote them. It is not a structured or gradated system, wherein the initiates can measure their progress, and there are no goals to aim for, like an exam. They are simply taught until the authorities decide they are ready for advancement, according to criteria the initiates themselves never seem to know about. Thus, novices and Accepted are dependent on Aes Sedai for everything, and have no outside support or alternatives. They are stuck in the Tower until the Tower decides otherwise. None of these things apply to Egwene, who has much to gain by not accepting their discipline or authority. But one characteristic of nearly every woman to have sworn the Three Oaths in Robert Jordan’s lifetime is a poor ability to react to unexpected situations, and very bad adaptation skills. They accept their system easily, but do not deal well with situations or people who break the mold.

Egwene’s successes are due almost entirely to Elaida and company failing to recognize this about Aes Sedai, or Egwene’s situation, and setting this whole thing up. Egwene, by contrast, had nothing to do with her scenario, and certainly never chose to be put in novice white again. Once more, she is simply handed an advantageous situation.

14: That doesn’t stop Egwene from believing that she is responsible for Nicola’s rehabilitation, when Silviana specifically enumerates (bearing in mind the Three Oaths’ limitations on bragging or hyperbole) her superiority at handling novices to Sheriam. Compared to Tiana, who appears to be absolutely inept and dependent on some of her novices to help her, Silviana looks like the tactical equivalent of Mat Cauthon when it comes to her training ability. A competent Mistress of Novices, and a legitimate White Tower as the setting are probably much more likely explanations for Nicola’s improvement. This was a grown woman who was on the verge of being married and unlike certain women in similar circumstances, actually had both a job and nice things to say about her fiancé. Her demeanor in Salidar is one of a woman who has not found her new circumstances quite as impressive as she was led to believe.

This could also explain a lot about her “issues” regarding the alleged misbehavior of the Two Rivers girls. They left home for the promise of the White Tower – to live in one of the most legendary and impressive structures in the world, described by someone in this chapter as a place of wonders, in the heart of the greatest city in the world, under the guidance and leadership of the legendary Amrylin Seat who outranked monarchs. They suddenly reverse direction and suddenly they are living in tents, in the middle of winter, doing housework in the mud, and the whole affair is run by a girl they would have gone to high school with. Underwhelming is about the kindest way you could describe their introduction to the “Tower”, especially after it turns out that Aes Sedai seem fairly amenable to being pushed around by Two Rivers people, whether Perrin back home, Rand in Caemlyn, or the former Wisdom’s bobble-head hip tumor.

Imagine being offered a chance at a glamorous and exciting job working for the president, and living in the White House (the Queen and Buckingham Palace for the lesser Anglophonic rafonauts), and your recruiter takes you to a trailer park to meet some guy (chick) your own age, from the old neighborhood claiming to be the REAL president (queen). We’re going to war against the people you thought you’d be working for, and attacking Washington DC (London). No, we’re not going to explain the reasons or offer a choice to mere rookies, you’re just going to come along, take lessons from a bunch of teachers who are pissed (wankered? bollocksed? ) about having to unexpectedly teach in the middle of a revolution, and do all the scut work. There might be a serial killer stalking the camp as well. And as for why this is all justified, well, as previously mentioned, we’re not going to go into the reasons, but we did have a single eyewitness to the opposition’s crimes until we fell asleep and he escaped. Obey us unquestioningly, we are mighty & all-knowing Aes Sedai!

With an obvious and much better explanation for a situation, Egwene takes her coincidental presence nearby to be the critical factor. Again.

15: Additionally, after being responsible for unprecedented numbers of women dumped into the aforementioned situation, Egwene then has the temerity to criticize the Aes Sedai for their neglect or mishandling of the novices lucky enough to not be abducted by rebels or recruited under false pretenses to a camp making war on the Tower. The Tower is the verge of the apocalypse. These women are all old enough to get married, and have children in their society. They came to the Tower expecting to spend their lives dealing with preternatural phenomena, and they and Egwene expect to be coddled over their encounters with preternatural phenomena. We see ordinary people who can’t even channel to the degree novices can, cope better than these ninnies, who haven’t even see the worst of what is out there, let alone suffered any physical harm.

Egwene even says as much, in a manner more appropriate to addressing the retards they apparently are, but it makes her furious that the women in charge of managing apocalypses are not taking time to fuss over adults who are freaking out after exactly zero of them are hurt or threatened. Also, Egwene baby-talks the novices with delusional talk about wonders, instead of telling them to put on their big girl pants because the apocalypse is just around the corner. What’s all the bedtime story blather going to come to the first time one of the novices or servants turns into a lump of asphalt or a person-suit for a colony of beetles? What about a bunch of novices seeing a creepy fog, and deciding to gallivant through it because “the Mother” told them not to be afraid of wonders that naturally accrue in the White Tower, only it eats them, like most fog does in this series?

Even if you are not going to rush their One Power development to make them reach a useful level in time for Tarmon Gaidon, you could at least nudge them mentally down the path of acceptance of the reality of the situation. Egwene would have wandered the French Quarter right before Katrina hit telling people there’s no need to get on the bus because of a little rain. Nawlins is a place of wonder, and tropical weather, after all! There’s no need to evacuate the Twin Towers, they’re the tallest buildings on the coast, of course you should expect the occasional airplane to hit them, stop crying and panicking, okay?

What’s worse, is Egwene tacitly acknowledges that the sisters have other things on their mind, vis a vis the approach of Tarmon Gaidon, contrasting these other preoccupations with their “neglect” of the novices: “They knew (Tarmon Gaidon) was coming despite their failure to console the novices and Accepted, and they were desperate to (find Rand)” How dare they be more interested in locating the indispensable figure for the survival of the world, than in fussing over people who should not need their attention!

Other points of interest in her dealings with the novices, include Egwene holding the Accepted Pedra as a good example. Remember Pedra, whom Egwene made the snap judgment to dislike when she first got to the Tower for the crime of passing on assignments and telling her the rules? Egwene apparently doesn’t. Her rote advice, when she’s not minimizing the signs of the End Times, is telling the novices to obey the sisters, obey the Accepted, work hard & work harder. Since Egwene stuck her tongue out at Accepted like Pedra, for nothing more than doing their jobs, thought nasty stuff about Faolain, who appears to be among the most principled Accepted in the Tower, and complained about her workload a whole bunch of times, I am a bit bemused as to how she came up with this advice, much less obey Aes Sedai, since she mostly ran around behind their backs, defied repeated orders to keep her mouth shut in favor of backtalk, and kept scoffing at any rule or order that limited her use of power, except for the time a Black Ajah member asked her a favor and she fell all over herself obeying that sister, overriding Nynaeve’s suspicions and caution, probably because Liandrin was the first person to treat her as someone important since she got off the boat to Tar Valon.

Throughout the series, we have seen mention of how the Tower discourages novices from relationships with men, citing the distraction and disruption of their lives and studies. Yet, while the term pillow friends comes up several times elsewhere, here in KoD it is first shown to be not discouraged or only tolerated in recollection like the pranks and so forth that Siuan and the others enumerate in Salidar. Unless homosexual relationships are inherently more shallow and less important to the participants, there is no reason why a “pillow friendship” would not be any less of an annoyance and distraction to their studies. Pregnancy should not an issue, the Tower of all places surely having access to heartleaf tea, and considering the other inhuman ways they treat their initiates, having them bear the child to then be raised in an orphanage of White Tower breeding stock to see if it grows up to be a female channeler, is much less worse than murdering them for thinking that saving lives is more important than Tower rules. In other words, considering that they allow homosexual relationships, and not just between initiates, but with servants as well, their excuses for forbidding heterosexual ones are extremely suspect. Doubling the number of female participants in a relationship probably squares the drama it produces.

The much more likely explanation is that the Tower is more interested in forbidding relationships that might go somewhere. They don’t want sisters forming commitments early in their development, until the Tower has had to anchor itself in their hearts and minds as the be-all and the end-all. A romantic partner who is also an initiate would only reinforce that training, while a girlfriend employed by the Tower as a servant is easily coopted to the sister’s agenda and lifestyle, in much the same way a waitress who dates a CEO or attorney or doctor or politician won’t wear the professional pants in that relationship. In other words, the couple does not plan their lives around the operating hours of the diner, the way they do to those of the firm or the hospital or the election cycle. Although Romanda’s musings on the subject re: Delana & Halima suggest that a sister who did follow her Sapphic concubine’s agenda instead of the Tower’s would end up with penances or something.

On the other hand, a husband and children would come with responsibilities and societal expectations, except in the case of Warder husbands, which is said to be the universal standard, with absolutely every Aes Sedai character eventually including Egwene and Nynaeve. Where a female partner doesn’t have any predetermined role designated by society, there ARE expectations for wives, even in a culture that is thoroughly accustomed to women wielding power and being the dominant partner in a relationship. A husband and children are not remotely a financial burden to an Aes Sedai’s finances, so the only real issue the Tower can be concerned with is of divided loyalties. And the extremes to which they go to purge anything else out of their initiates and sisters is incredibly disturbing.

And Egwene is always on their side…

16: On yet another bit of hypocrisy, Egwene is fuming over the animosity and dissension among the sisters in the Tower, while at the same time, actively trying to sow dissent! Romanda cited the same phenomenon, noting that by Egwene’s own account, half her work has already been done. She’s like a murderer who’s annoy to find her planned victim bleeding out. In any event, her fury at the sisters for the state of affairs gives the lie to any of her claims of success. She’s just one more voice in a general cacophony – she’s barely being heard, let alone drowning anyone out. And if she is mad at those who are to blame for the state of affairs – if it is so inherently bad and wrong that anyone who let it happen deserves punishment and censure – she would have been to blame if it were not and she were at all capable of achieving her goals.

17: With her prior rants about Rand Compelling or otherwise enslaving Aes Sedai, there was at least the mitigation that she would be reasonable when she learned the truth. Not so. Despite hearing sisters mention the attempts to kidnap Rand, sanctioned by the Tower authorities, she is still irate upon learning about sisters swearing fealty to Rand.
“Being ta’veren or the Dragon Reborn was no excuse. No Aes Sedai had ever before sworn fealty to any man.”

Or woman, you hypocritical piece of excrement!

18: Frequently cited by Egwene supporters as an act of friendship is her encounter with Mattin Stepaneos. In their defense, it is probably the nicest thing Egwene has ever done for Rand that did not include betraying confidences or criminal endangerment of innocent people, and they are kind of starved for choice on examples of things she does for him, but this hardly counts. It just so happens that Elaida (whom Egwene was going to kneel to, except she’d spank the Blues before letting them come back) fed Mattin Stepaneos the worst rumors of Rand’s activities, and Egwene corrects him to discredit Elaida. Instead of going on to defend Rand’s actions in Illian, which she would be doing if she were interested in protecting her friend, her next topic is Elaida’s control and deception of the former. She isn’t being pro-Rand, she’s being anti-Elaida, with Rand as a collateral beneficiary. Note that on the charge of murdering Morgase, she cites Elayne’s public statements, rather than her certain knowledge of Rand’s innocence and determination to avenge a monarch whose power was usurped by the Forsaken. She never even brings up Sammael, to explain Rand’s conquest of Illian.

But even if she was going to defend Rand, what’s the big deal? Does she try to set the Aes Sedai in the Tower or rebel camp straight about his benevolence? No, she talks him up as a dangerous or difficult individual Elaida has turned against the Tower, because that benefits her the most. The only one to whom she says anything positive is a useless old man, whose only future significance can come through Rand’s diminishment, and whose past significance is in a role now held by Rand. The only way Rand can benefit from this conversation is if Mattin Stepaneos regains his throne, and decides to give Rand a fair chance as an ally, in which case, he’d have to be a lot more trouble than anything that can be alleviated by the King of Illian’s friendship.

19: Eventually Egwene encounters Beonin, and it is telling that she gives not the slightest thought to how her blunder contributed to Beonin's decision to come to the Tower. Rather than give her the slightest benefit of the doubt, or wonder if Beonin is working an angle, she blurts out a public accusation of betrayal and being Black Ajah. If she’s wrong about the former, she’s just blown the cover of an ally. If she’s RIGHT about the latter, she’s just marked herself for death, to absolutely no purpose! What would have resulted from those words if Beonin had really been Black? Egwene would have been taken that very night, if not before, and her death passed off as an escape attempt. Fortunately, Egwene being Egwene, she was wrong, and so she survives, making the discerning reader wonder if some part of her decision-making process wasn’t simply playing the odds “I think X, which is dangerous, but I’m usually wrong, so it will likely be safe to blurt out. Okay, then.”

When Beonin’s typical Aes Sedai stupidity and lack of imagination fails to cover her rationale for throwing off Egwene’s imposed oath, and Egwene gains the upper hand in her conversation, she allows Beonin an escape by leaping to a political assumption. Known that Beonin has betrayed something, Egwene simply assumes it is the infiltrators (whose position she had likened to her own, thus an ego-driven reason for leaping to that conclusion) she had blackmailed Beonin, Sheriam and the rest over. She completely ignores the much more tactically important topic of the rebellion’s advantages in channeling, and allows that fact to remain undiscovered.

Egwene comes away from that encounter calling it a victory, and never mind that once again, she got her way through threats of blackmail, and because her victim was, once again, too stupid to call her bluff. Exposing Beonin’s oath of fealty would inevitably lead to the reason, and Egwene’s punishment for blackmailing a sister would be much worse, not to mention exposing Sheriam and the rest. Hell, in Silviana’s or Elaida’s place, I’d be sure to pass that through the negotiators to the rebel Hall, just to disrupt their leadership and point out what kind of leader they were following. Next to blackmailing the women who had stood for her raising, Elaida would definitely look like the superior choice.

Later, with Leane, the continuing attempts by Leane’s interrogators to learn Traveling, make them think Beonin has not betrayed those techniques, and never mind that concealing your level of knowledge from the subject is one of the first rules of interrogation. You know, most people need the Aes Sedai in question to SAY something deceptive to be tricked by the First Oath. Egwene manages to trick herself.

The conversation taking place among Leane’s White Ajah guards should be noted, just for the purposes of contrast when Egwene matches up against White sisters in a debate. As with any Egwene success, it is usually because the opposition is not playing their A-game. In the case of the White Ajah, this is not even a matter for debate.

20: Egwene also cites the issue of Shemerin’s demotion as an example of Elaida’s overreaching the limits of her office. But if Aes Sedai status is set and independent of the Amyrlin’s authority, than Egwene has no business raising sisters by decree. If you can’t deny the shawl to Shemerin who has passed the tests and sworn the Oaths, how can you accord it to women who have done neither, just because the Amyrlin said so? That in each camp people chose not to make an issue of it does not concern the legal ramifications. If Shemerin not contesting her demotion does not excuse Elaida, then the Hall deciding not to contest Nynaeve & co’s promotions does not excuse Egwene. If possession of the shawl is as inviolate as Elaida’s critics make it out to be, Egwene has no business handing them out as party favors at her inauguration.

21: Egwene’s final error in her PoV chapter is the belief that winning the sympathy of the novices, who as previously discussed are in need of some serious reassessments regarding the issues of maturity, courage and judgment. But even if they retained any credibility after their collective lawn sprinkler impression in this series, so what? Egwene took a year to get promoted to Accepted and that was way too fast according to the current Mistress of Novices. The time spent as Accepted is supposed to be roughly the same, so the earliest any of those novices will be in a position for their opinions to count for anything is half a decade away. All her progress with the novices is like improving your painting skills while training for the Olympics. Whatever the subjective value, it has zero relevance to the goal at hand. Remember, Egwene’s position on the issue of novices has been in the direction of holding them back and infantilizing them, rather than doing ANYthing that might prepare them to contribute at Tarmon Gaidon, much less have any effect on the outcome of the Tower struggle.

Egwene could make or break the rebellion, and could cause the Tower to be reunited tomorrow, albeit in a much worse position for the rebels, thanks to her capture undermining their bargaining position, or she could order an attack that would very likely succeed, leaving her firmly in charge, if somewhat reduced in practical power, and absent as many followers as she would wish. But instead, she’s patting herself on the back because she’s making infinitesimal progress with Tarmon Gaidon in the offing, while she stubbornly refuses to take any action that will assuredly reduce her future power.

Her final thought in this book is that she is “winning her war.” Well, isn’t that sweet for you! It’s a good thing the Tower is not nearly as important to the rest of the world as Egwene thinks it is, otherwise, the human race would be doomed or wishing the Seanchan Empress would live forever, as they tried to fend off the Shadow, because Egwene’s dilatory fight nearly ran out the clock before the Last Battle.

In Elaida’s subsequent meeting with Tarna following Egwene’s self-congratulatory tea, Elaida reiterates her orders that Egwene is not to be broken. You know those stories where the hero, captured or betrayed in his enemies’ hands, defiantly invites his captors to “do your worst!”? Yeah, this is not that. Egwene, as always, only goes up against the J.V. opposition, and demands credit for hitting a home run off a tee.

Now I have to take on Sanderson’s books. I have no idea how I’m going to work with the discrepancies and suspect word choices, so the next entry might be a while.